ers and acquaintances.
The sauce of danger made the escapade the more attractive.

Half a mile from home a creek, shallow, but broad, crossed the road. We
could not pass over dry-shod and had to go up the bank into the low
grounds to find a long log laid from side to side of a narrower part of
the stream. My companion hoisted me upon her back and ran along the
uncertain bridge as fleetly as a squirrel.

"How far are we going?" I asked, as she set me down.

"Around by Tom's Hill, and then cut across the field home. It's more
than a mile. Can you walk so far?"

"I walked two miles at a time, once!" I boasted.

"You are a brave little lightwood knot!"

She was "fey"--_exaltee_--in the state of lighthearted-and
lightheadedness for which sober, literal, decorous English has no
synonym. As we went, she danced and sang, and laughed out joyously at
everything and at nothing, and talked the most fascinating nonsense--all
in the role of "Cousin Burwell." She could imitate him to perfection;
her strut and swagger and slang threw me into paroxysms of delight. We
picked huckleberries, and dived into the woods to feast upon wild plums
that had ten drops of syrupy juice between tough skins and flinty
stones encased in the pulp of bitterness, and gathered handfuls of wild
flowers because their beauty tempted sight and touch, and with no
intention of taking them home with us. Two of Pan's dryads turned loose
for a holiday could not have sported more irrationally.

We met neither man nor beast until we had climbed Tom's Hill, a stony
eminence from the top of which, as the neighbors were proud of saying,
one could see six dwelling-houses, each with its group of outbuildings,
representing six fine plantations. A saddle-horse was tied to a
persimmon tree a hundred yards or so down the other side. He whinnied at
sight of us, and Cousin Molly Belle ran up to him.

"Well done, Snap! old fellow! clothes don't make any difference to
you--do they?"

It was Mr. Frank Morton's riding horse, and the fence by which he stood
bounded an extensive tobacco field belonging to Mr. Frank Morton's
brother. About the middle of the field was a tobacco barn, and by
climbing upon the top rail of the fence so as to overlook a row of
sassafras saplings, I could see a group of men about the door. Their
backs were toward us, and if they had looked our way they could not have
seen us, when I got down.

Cousin Molly Belle's eyes were two dancing stars. She